If you’re an Albertan driving in British Columbia, and you get pulled over by the police and handed a traffic ticket, you may be curious about whether or not this will appear on your driving record in Alberta.
The first thing you should know is that all provinces share information with each other regarding said traffic tickets, and so basically, if you get a ticket in one province all the other ones know it.
If you get an IRP in British Columbia, that infraction will be reflected on your driving record. However, if you get some kind of traffic ticket, perhaps a speeding ticket in BC, you shouldn’t expect that to appear on your Alberta driving record.
The reason for this is that your driving record is held by the province. It’s a record generated by the provincial government, of convictions you received in that province. So, therefore, entries on the record don’t transfer, but the information is still shared between the provinces.
If you’re from Alberta, or have an Alberta license, and get a ticket in BC, you do still get a record of it. BC will keep a record of the ticket, and a driving file is created for you.
If you’ve never had a BC license, they will also create a BC driver’s license number for you, even though you don’t have a license there, and that is associated with the file they created.
Future Problems
While at the moment, the file the BC government creates for you may not seem like a problem, in the long run, it could result in some difficulties.
Say you are from Alberta, you get a traffic ticket while in BC, have a file created for you, but think nothing of it. But then, years later you decide to move to BC years later, and that same driver’s license number that was created for you will automatically become your driver’s license number.
And that ticket you got 10 years ago, you got while you had an Alberta driver’s license, will be reflected on your BC driving record.
While many people may think a ticket you get while out of province won’t affect you, even though it may not in that specific moment, you don’t know what the future holds, and that record will follow you if you end up coming to BC.
Cross-province punishments
Points do not transfer between provinces, but just like how provincial governments can reciprocate punishments if you get an IRP, they can also do it for traffic tickets.
So, if Ontario or Alberta or whatever province you are from finds out about the ticket you got while in BC, and perhaps you already have a bad driving record or are maybe you’re an inexperienced driver, the government has the authority, under whatever their specific provincial traffic safety act is, to reflect the consequences of having that entry on your
driving record, even though it is not actually there.
What this means is that you can get a prohibition for having an unsatisfactory driving record based on a ticket you got in BC, despite you not even being a driver from BC, if your provincial government chooses to reciprocate the consequences of the ticket.
It’s important to understand that you are not immune to the consequences of your ticket just because it happened in another province.
What happens when BC Traffic tickets pile up
Another thing people may not be aware of is that if you’re from another province, and you get a bunch of tickets in BC, two things can happen.
The first is that BC can decide, based on a pattern of tickets you get over time, that you are actually living in BC.
This happens a lot to people who travel between provinces for work. If you are a resident of Alberta and have an Alberta license, but you work in BC and keep getting traffic tickets there, BC can decide to prohibit you on the basis of its conclusion that you are living in BC.
In those circumstances, you would receive an indefinite prohibition from driving. That means you would not be allowed to drive in BC until you do one of two things.
The first is that you could get a BC driver’s license. However, in those circumstances, you could not get one, because you are not living in BC.
The second is to prove to ICBC and the Superintendent of Motor Vehicles, that you are not living in BC and thus exempt from the license.
Proving that though can actually be very difficult. It’s not just a matter of handing over your Alberta license with your Alberta address. You have to have copies of your bills, your tenancy agreement or mortgage documents, and evidence to show that you do in fact live in Alberta and work in BC.
In these cases, that means the burden is on you to prove that you don’t live in BC and are thus exempt from getting a BC license. Proving this also comes at a cost of a $100.00 review fee.
That is the first thing that can happen to you if you’re from out of province but gets a lot of traffic tickets in BC.
The other thing that can happen if you’re from out of province, or even more commonly it happens if you’re from out of the country, is BC will look at you and claim you to be an inexperienced driver.
Since you don’t have a driver’s license here, and they don’t have a record associated with you, when they assign you that driving file, they’ll treat you like you’re the lowest level of experience driving.
Which means one or two tickets, are enough for you to lose your license.
An example of this could be that you come to BC, and while you’re here you get one cellphone ticket. That would be enough for them to be able to take your license in BC and then they could put you on a driving prohibition here for five months.
The things people don’t know about BC driving prohibitions
For a lot of people who don’t live in BC, they think that it doesn’t matter when they get a letter in the mail saying their prohibited from driving there for 5 months, because they’re not planning on going there during that time.
What they don’t realize until it’s too late, is that the prohibition doesn’t begin until they actually acknowledge it. People will get the letter, then not sign it and send it back to ICBC, so then the prohibition never actually began.But then two years later, when they come to BC and start driving, thinking everything is okay, and then get pulled over, they’ll be served the driving prohibition at that point, because they never realized the prohibition had never taken affect.
And now, they’re in BC having to serve the prohibition when they were expecting to be able to drive, which will be incredibly inconvenient.
Another thing that could happen, and result in the same problem, is if someone were to move.
If a person was living in BC, had a license here and got tickets here, then moved to Alberta, they would maybe think they were fine because traffic tickets won’t show up on their driving record.
But they also got a driving prohibition, however, that was sent from ICBC to their BC home, because ICBC doesn’t know they moved.
When they come back to BC, and they’re pulled over by the police, it will result in them being handed the driving prohibition they didn’t even know they had in the first place.
The point of all of this information, is to make sure people understand, that even though a ticket in BC does not appear on your Alberta driving record, that does mean you are immune to consequences, in either province, if you get a ticket.
So even if you are out of province, there is still good reason to dispute your ticket.
